In Wisconsin, the major-party presidential primaries are overshadowed by an officially non-partisan general election for one of seven seats on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in which there are two candidates vying for a seat on Wisconsin’s highest bench. One of the candidates in the state supreme court race is Rebecca Bradley, a far-right incumbent state supreme court justice appointed to the court by Republican Governor Scott Walker. Bradley’s opponent is JoAnne Kloppenburg, a dedicated public servant and jurist who is currently a state appellate court justice and previously served as a Wisconsin assistant attorney general under both Democratic and Republican state attorneys general.

Many, many years before Bradley became a state supreme court justice, Bradley wrote a series of hateful columns for the student newspaper and student magazine of Marquette University. Bradley also has a very long history of saying incredibly offensive things, even long after she graduated from college.

Kloppenburg is running a brilliant, factual attack ad against Bradley, using Bradley’s own words against her:

Long story short, I believe that the people of Wisconsin cannot afford ten more years of an ideologically-motivated politician like Rebecca Bradley issuing decisions from Wisconsin’s highest bench. That’s why I encourage Wisconsinites to vote for the only independent-minded jurist running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court: JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg believes that justices should interpret the laws, not use the judiciary to enact a political agenda by judicial fiat.

The general election for Wisconsin Supreme Court is April 5, and will be held alongside the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in Wisconsin. Go, Jo, Go!

In a 1992 column for Marquette University’s student-run magazine, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, who is seeking a full ten-year term on Wisconsin’s highest bench, wrote that Camille Pagila, a misogynistic college professor at the (Philadelpha) University of the Arts who is noted for her anti-feminist screeds, “legitimately suggested” that women play a role in date rape:

State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote that Camille Paglia “legitimately suggested that women play a role in date rape” as a student at Marquette University.

Bradley’s comment about the academic and cultural critic Paglia was part of a column she wrote for the fall 1992 edition of the Marquette Journal, the university’s student-run magazine.

I firmly believe that any judge or any other person who holds a public office, whether elected to that office or, like Bradley was, appointed to that office, is absolutely unfit for a judgeship or any other public office if they even think about condoning date rape, much less write about it in a magazine.

I strongly encourage Wisconsinites to vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg for Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 5.

Scott Walker-appointed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of America’s worst judges.

First off, Bradley is completely neglecting her duties as a state supreme court justice. In one instance, Bradley left the state supreme court chamber while the court was hearing oral arguments in a case before Wisconsin’s highest court to attend an event hosted by a right-wing political organization:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley cut out of oral arguments last week so she could give a political speech to the state’s chamber of commerce — a group that has spent heavily in the past backing conservative candidates.

Bradley refused an interview request, but a spokeswoman for her argued it was routine for justices to leave arguments early. So far, her campaign has not been able to cite an instance of another justice stepping out of arguments for campaign reasons.

[…]

(Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine) Geske, who served on the court from 1993 to 1998, said (to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) justices rarely left arguments early while she was on the bench.

If a justice leaves a state supreme court chamber, it better be for a good reason, such as illness, illness or death in the family, or something along those lines. What Rebecca Bradley did was the moral equivalent of a child staying home from school so that the child could play in the sandbox at home. If the people of Wisconsin don’t tolerate schoolchildren being truant from school, they shouldn’t re-elect a truant state supreme court justice.

Earlier today, the progressive group One Wisconsin Now uncovered multiple newspaper columns that Bradley wrote for the Marquette Tribune, a Marquette University student newspaper, in which Bradley, among other things, referred to LGBT people as “queers” and claimed that people who contract AIDS are effectively committing suicide:

Newly appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley in student newspaper columns 24 years ago said she had no sympathy for AIDS patients because they had effectively chosen to kill themselves, called gays “queers” and said Americans were “either totally stupid or entirely evil” for electing President Bill Clinton.

In one column, she wrote people were better off getting AIDS than cancer because it would get more funding.

“How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent victims of more prevalent ailments,” she wrote.

The truth of the matter is that not all people who are affected by HIV and AIDS are homosexual, in fact, former NASCAR driver Tim Richmond, who was heterosexual, died as a result of AIDS three years before Bradley wrote those columns. Furthermore, hurling hate speech at LGBT people is a form of bigotry, and that is absolutely unacceptable. Regarding her remarks about Bill Clinton, claiming that Clinton burned the American flag is, to my knowledge, absolutely false.

Bradley’s remarks about LGBT people in 1992 are eerily similar to homophobic remarks that Michael Savage made on an MSNBC program in 2003:

If MSNBC could fire Michael Savage for making homophobic remarks about a prank phone caller, then the people of Wisconsin should fire Rebecca Bradley for making homophobic remarks about LGBT people. The people of Wisconsin will have that opportunity on April 5, and Bradley’s opponent is JoAnne Kloppenburg.

You may remember Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge JoAnn Kloppenburg, then a Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General, from the contentious 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where she narrowly lost to conservative incumbent David “The Choker” Prosser by a few thousand votes in a race that featured an infamous vote-counting snafu in Waukesha County, the most populous right-wing stronghold in Wisconsin.

There are going to be three main differences between Kloppenburg’s 2011 campaign and her 2016 campaign:

In 2011, Kloppenburg ran against David Prosser, an ultra-conservative state supreme court justice who is a controversial figure in Wisconsin politics. This time, she’s running for the seat currently held by Patrick Crooks, who, while technically a Republican, has generally sided against the conservative majority on the constitutional crisis involving the Wisconsin Constitution amendment that gives the justices on Wisconsin’s highest bench to power to vote for one of their own to be chief justice. The amendment is currently subject to an ongoing lawsuit involving a dispute over when the amendment is supposed to go into effect. It’s not clear as to whether or not Crooks will run for re-election at this time, and Crooks’s campaign has not commented on Kloppenburg entering the race that I’m aware of.

In 2011, due to the union-busting Act 10 having been enacted not too long before the supreme court race that year, there was far higher turnout than what would normally be seen for a state supreme court race in Wisconsin. This year, turnout is probably going to be either at the level of what would be expected for a supreme court race in Wisconsin (typically about one-third of that of a midterm election in Wisconsin) or somewhat higher, depending on whether or not one or both major parties has a serious nomination contest for president ongoing by April of next year. I’m guessing that the 2016 presidential primaries in Wisconsin will be held in April, although the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s state government may move the primaries up to February to try to give Scott Walker a better chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, but there’s nothing confirmed about that at this time.

Kloppenburg’s potential opponents include incumbent justice Patrick Crooks, Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Joe Donald, Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge Rebecca Bradley, and Former Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. I know very little about Donald, other than the fact that he was originally appointed to the Milwaukee County bench by Former Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, and the fact he’s been praised by Ed Fallone, the Marquette University professor who ran for state supreme court in 2013 on a progressive message and platform (losing to conservative incumbent Pat Roggensack, who is now the acting chief justice of the court pending the lawsuit regarding the chief justice amendment that I explained above). Van Hollen and Bradley are right-wing judicial activists, especially Bradley, who has known ties to far-right judicial activist groups like the Federalist Society and has donated money to Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns. Donald is all but certain to run; I’m not sure if Van Hollen and/or Bradley are interested in running or not.

I am not endorsing a candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court at this time, but I may do so at some point before the spring 2016 elections in Wisconsin.

That’s because the new Marquette University Law School (MU Law) poll shows that 56% of Wisconsinites disapprove of the job that Walker is doing as Governor of Wisconsin an unofficial presidential candidate who spends very little time doing his actual job of Governor of Wisconsin. Two factors are primarily driving home-state opposition to Walker, both of which are part of Walker’s most recent state budget proposal. First, the Walker budget’s proposed cuts to education funding are very unpopular with Wisconsinites, with 78% opposing Walker’s cuts to K-12 education and 70% opposing Walker’s cuts to higher education. Second, the Walker budget’s proposed corporate welfare giveaway to the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks for a proposed new Milwaukee arena is wildly unpopular across the entire state, with 79% of all Wisconsinites, 67% of Wisconsinites who live in the Milwaukee local television market, and a whopping 88% of Wisconsinites who live outside of the Milwaukee local television market opposing corporate welfare for a proposed Bucks arena. In addition to those two items, many of Walker’s other policies, such as wage theft, state takeovers of Wisconsin public schools, and expanding unconstitutional school voucher programs, are also unpopular with Wisconsinites.

Walker can’t even get a majority of the Republicans in his home state to support his presidential bid. Walker is only at 40% among Republicans in a hypothetical Wisconsin Republican presidential primary poll that included Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Carly Fiorina. For comparison’s sake, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, got 72% of the vote in the 2012 Republican presidential primary in his home state of Massachusetts.

If this trend continues, it could be game over for Scott Walker’s political career.